Suzette Martinez Standring: Boston named after St. Botolph

Sunday

In and around Boston, windows are festooned with shamrocks and leprechauns. St. Patrick’s name may grace a popular parade but the city’s namesake belongs to a different bishop: St. Botolph.

In and around Boston, windows are festooned with shamrocks and leprechauns. St. Patrick’s name may grace a popular parade but the city’s namesake belongs to a different bishop: St. Botolph.

The city is named after a 7th century abbot from England.

Born around 610 into Saxon nobility, Botolph opted for a spiritual life, becoming a monk as a young man. Later as an abbot, he founded a Benedictine monastery in England in 654. The area around the monastery became known as “Botolphston” (Botolph’s Town) and the name was later shortened to “Boston.”

Today, the original location of the monastery is debated between two possible sites. “Botolphston” was located near the wetlands or “fens” of East Anglia in Southern Lincolnshire, about 100 miles north of London. Yet the Ikenhoe monastery Botolph built may have stood on a hill in the parish of Iken near Suffolk, England.

Monastery walls have crumbled to nothing long ago, but Botolph’s reputation for good humor, a sharp mind and charitable works endures. “The Life of St. Ceolfrith,” a 7th century book of unknown authorship, described Botolph as “a man of remarkable life and learning, full of the grace of the Holy Spirit.”

For someone bent on turning people’s hearts toward God, one can only imagine the hurdles he faced in the 7th century. Reading was not common. Mass communication did not exist. There were no easy platforms to spark ideas or spiritual dialogue nationally.

No, Botolph had to bring people around by dint of his spirit and personality, trekking throughout France and England to spread the gospel before founding the monastery at Ikenhoe. In person, he was persuasive.

A man “full of the grace of the Holy Spirit”– what could that look or feel like to the strangers he encountered? The Bible in Galatians, 5:22-23 says, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.”

Stories say Botolph brought countless people to Christianity, and about 71 churches in England are named after him.

According to lore, Botolph performed miracles, prophecies and exorcisms. Legend has it that demons inhabited in the wetlands near the site Botolph chose for his monastery. The spirits protested with ghostly groans and poisonous fumes. Undeterred, Botolph drained the land, built the monastery and created prosperous growing fields.

After his death in 680, everybody wanted a part of him, literally.

In 970 King Edgar permitted Botolph’s remains to be transferred to a church in Burg near Woodridge. Then fifty years later, his relics were moved to the abbey at Bury St. Edmunds.

Over time, Botolph’s remains were divided up further and sent to Thorney Abbey, Westminster Abbey, Ely Cathedral near Cambridge and other places in England.

In death, his bones journeyed almost as much as he did in life. But then Botolph is a patron saint of travelers.

The saint’s influence crossed the Atlantic and the American city of Boston is named after him. Poets, writers and artists belonged to St. Botolph’s Club, founded in 1880, and which still operates on Commonwealth Avenue in Boston. The club was named after the saint under the chairmanship of none other than John Quincy Adams. St. Botolph was to symbolize the kindly spirit and good humor of its membership, which included Henry Cabot Lodge, John Singer Sargent and Robert Frost.

The English abbot’s feast day is June 17, exactly three months after March 17, a celebration day honoring a popular bishop from Ireland.

An annual St. Patrick’s Day parade will wend through local streets near Boston. Yet it’s a good time to tip one’s bowler to the city’s real patron saint, the good St. Botolph.

E-mail Suzette Standring at suzmar@comcast.net

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